1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to speech and speaker recognition and, more particularly, to the sharing of customized command libraries provided for recognizable speakers such as for voice activated control of connections or other functions made by a telephone system or other network.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many electronic devices require input from a user in order to convey to the device particular information required to determine or perform a desired function or, in a trivially simple case, when a desired function is to be performed as would be indicated by, for example, activation of an on/off switch. When multiple different inputs are possible, a keyboard comprising an array of two or more switches has been the input device of choice in recent years.
However, keyboards of any type have inherent disadvantages. Most evidently, keyboards include a plurality of distributed actuable areas, each generally including moving parts subject to wear and damage and which must be sized to be actuated by a portion of the body unless a stylus or other separate mechanical expedient is employed. Accordingly, in many types of devices, such as input panels for security systems and electronic calculators, the size of the device is often determined by the dimensions of the keypad rather than the electronic contents of the housing. Additionally, numerous keystrokes may be required (e.g. to specify an operation, enter a security code, personal identification number (PIN), etc.) which slows operation and increases the possibility that erroneous actuation may occur. Therefore, use of a keyboard or other manually manipulated input structure requires action which is not optimally natural or expeditious for the user.
In an effort to provide a more naturally usable, convenient and rapid interface and to increase the capabilities thereof, numerous approaches to voice or sound detection and recognition systems have been proposed and implemented with some degree of success. Additionally, such systems could theoretically have the capability of matching utterances of a user against utterances of enrolled speakers for granting or denying access to resources of the device or system or calling customized command libraries in accordance with speaker identity in a manner which may be relatively transparent and convenient to the user.
Among such applications (although not admitted to be prior art as to the present invention) are so-called corporate voice dialing systems by which any person in a relatively large group of users of a telephone system or other network could use a voice command to specify a connection to be made. In such an application, of course, it would be impractical to provide recognition or discrimination of entries of even a relatively small phone book since any user is very unlikely to ever seek a connection with more than a minuscule proportion of the entries therein as well as the fact that many entries will be under the same or similar names which can only be discriminated by address. (Of course, speech recognition could be provided for directory assistance using voice recognition to guide the system through a hierarchical search in any system.) Additionally, sharing of lists would provide simplification of updating and maintaining consistency of entries which may otherwise appear on a plurality of lists. Further, it is natural for a user of such a system to use pseudonyms in a command in such a system and, generally, there will be a substantial commonality of the pseudonyms used (e.g. "call my wife", "call my supervisor", "call Bob", "call home", etc.) among users which may simplify the speech recognition process.
Therefore, it is convenient to establish a customized directory of recognizable commands for each user. Each user can enroll a list of these commands together with the actions to be taken (e.g. entry of the number to be dialed) when the command is uttered and modify the list from time to time thereafter. Speaker recognition can be used to fetch the appropriate list even for multiple users of the same terminal.
However, a user may also wish to use the list of another user to place a call or issue a command. Such a facility would allow the minimization of individual directories and storage requirements for the same while allowing a user to make a connection without necessarily knowing the identity of the party to be called (e.g. another user's home or supervisor in an emergency or to convey a message). Similarly, if a user wishes to place a call to a party which the user knows to be frequently called by another user, switching to the other user's list would provide the information without the need to personally contact the other user. Pooling of lists may be very useful within a supervisory hierarchy or in organizations such as a sales group particularly for propagation of updated information.
On the other hand, it is also desirable that each user have control over the entries in a customized command library that could be accessed by another user and system access controls must be maintained to prevent one user from calling a command authorized only for another user. It is also possible that a user may wish to allow a command to be accessed by some additional users but not other users of the system.
Accordingly, it is seen that there is a need to provide publishable entries at the will of any user and selectively provide for the switching of directories between users within the capabilities of a speech recognition system.